As Chinese missionaries move into the regions of China that have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ, they often find themselves in cultures deeply rooted in centuries of indigenous religions. One of those religions is of the The Yi minority group.
The Yi people have a population of about six million and I got to know them intimately while working with Chinese missionaries during the years that I lived in the western city of Kunming.
The Yi people have always lived in the forests of Yunnan, Sichuan, Guangxi, and Guizhou Provinces. Of particular notice is their worship of the trees. The Yi people traditionally practice a religion often referred to as Bimoism, which has strong animistic beliefs of worshiping nature – especially sacred trees that spirits inhabit.
As Chinese Christians look to minister to the Yi minority groups that worship sacred trees, they would do well to look throughout history and see what can be learned from what God has done in the past. One historical story of particular interest is the first missionary sent to the Germans by the name of Wynfrid.
Wynfrid was born in Wessex, present day Devon, England in the year 675. At a young age he felt the call of God on his life to be a missionary to the Germans. Wynfrid traveled to Hesse (central Germany) in 721 and found that the people worshipping a special oak tree called the Tree of Thor.
Thor was a Norse God of war and the special tree was venerated and worshipped. Every year, a small child was sacrificed to the tree in a nearby well. The Germans believed that if the tree was angry, entire village populations would be annihilated. The people feared the tree.
Filled with the boldness of God and seeing an evangelistic opportunity, Wynfrid went to the tree during the annual sacrifice and interrupted the ceremony where a small child was to be sacrificed. He is said to have stood in front of the tree with an axe and began preaching the Gospel as he chopped it down, saying, “Here is the Thunder Oak; and here the cross of Christ shall break the hammer of the false god Thor.”
The people panicked, fearing the wrath of Thor, but Wynfrid told them not to fear. After some time, the Germans were astounded to see that Wynfrid was not harmed. He told them that they did not have to sacrifice their children to find salvation because God had already gave His only Son for them to have salvation freely.
Many Germans became Christian that day.
Before they left and being 800 years before the printing press, Wynfrid wanted to give them something to remember the stories of the Gospel that he shared, so he gave them small evergreen trees. He told them to remember the message by taking the trees into their homes which represent their new life. The triangular shaped trees also represented the Holy Trinity and the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit would point always point them towards heaven just as the tree points upward towards heaven. And the branches that remained green even in the winter represented the eternal salvation that Christ gives to all of us.
In 754, the pagans, angered by Wynfrid’s message of Christ, was killed by a mob of German pagans, but his message never died. Even today, Wynfrid is known as the father of the Christian Germany and the tree that he gave continues to be given every Christmas as Christians share gifts with one another to remember the birth of Jesus Christ.
The life of Wynfrid stands as a strong testimony to our friends in China today of how God can reach reach those that worship nature to be transformed into a culture that allows nature to be used to worship God.
It was Saint Boniface who cut down Thor’s tree.
St. Boniface and Wynfrid are the same person. St. Boniface’s birth name was Wynfrid.